Japanese Website Translation Basics

December 10, 2012

For the last few decades, getting a foothold in the Japanese
market has proven difficult for foreign firms. The internet has
helped to open the gates to this very interesting and complex
market. Despite most of the population having studied English as
part of their formal education, the Japanese people overwhelming
prefer to visit sites that are truly Japanese in style and content.
Still many companies fail to recognize the importance of fully
localizing and customizing the website experience for the Japanese
consumer. Attracting the right Japanese consumer and keeping them
loyal has never been more difficult.

Big in Japan

Although Japan's economy continues to face challenges, it still
ranks among one of the leaders in the world. It boasts over a 98%
literacy rate and a citizenry known for its work ethic and devotion
to lifetime employment at a single employer (though this has
changed in recent years). Furthermore, the Japanese are
technophiles. This technologically advanced society is an early
adopter and heavy consumer of the bleeding-edge electronics.
According to Internet World Stats (Internet World Stats, June 2012), Japan boasts
over 101 million users (~80% of the population) and growing.

Worldwide Top Internet
Countries - Q2 2012 (users in millions)

Japan's Mobile Market

Smartphone usage across Asia continues to grow at
leaps and bounds. Japan raced to a leadership position years ago
and continues to demonstrate an unusual propensity to use handheld
devices. When creating the information architecture for website
content, organizations addressing the Japanese market must
comprehend how to communicate using this smaller form factor.
Smartphone use is on the rise in the US, the UK, France, Germany
and Japan according to a study conducted by
Google on Daily Internet Usage (2011).

The
Japanese users reach first for their smartphones when accessing
internet content. Google continues to provide valuable insight into
this market with their Our Mobile
Planet 2012 Research. This research yielded that "77% of
Japanese smartphone users have used their phone every day in the
past 7 days, which is the highest among the 26 countries around the
word." When queried on the most common activities performed on
mobile devices, 68% of Japanese indicate that they are using their
smartphone for mobile search. It is clear that consumers are
dependent on their mobile devices and companies need to recognize
its importance.

The Japanese Language

Japanese is an East Asian language spoken by about 125 million
speakers, primarily in Japan, where it is the national language. It
is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family, whose
relation to other language groups is debated.

Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with simple
phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant
length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is
normally subject-object-verb with particles marking the grammatical
function of words, and sentence structure is topic-comment.
Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic
impact, or make questions. Nouns have no grammatical number, gender
or article aspect. Verbs are conjugated, primarily tense and voice,
but not person. Japanese equivalents of adjectives are also
conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics with verb
forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of the
speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned.

Japanese has no genealogical relationship with Chinese, but
makes extensive use of Chinese characters, or kanji (漢字), in its
writing system and a large portion of its vocabulary is borrowed
from Chinese. Along with kanji, the Japanese writing system
primarily uses two syllabic (or moraic) scripts, hiragana (ひらがな or
平仮名) and katakana (カタカナ or 片仮名). Latin script is used in a limited
way, often in the form of rōmaji, and the numeral system uses
mostly Arabic alongside traditional Chinese numerals. (source: Wikipedia)

Japanese Website Translation Basic Steps

Building a glossary: Key terminology is
identified and extracted from the source files provided by the
client. Upon client approval of the source terminology, it is
translated and provided back to the client for review and approval.
After that, the terminology is imported into a translation memory
tool and updated as needed.

Make sure content is culturally correct by considering:

Local customs

Local content

Morality

Symbols

Cultural values and social context

Not only to translate but also "localize" (adapt) for the
foreign markets

Cultural differences

Colors have different meanings in different countries (e.g.
white means holy in the US and mourning in China)

Cultural references or examples must be adapted to the target
language or country

Images: issues of comprehensibility and cultural
appropriateness (e.g. sports represented by a football image in
Argentina and a baseball image in the US)

Translation and copy writing: A professional
translation service includes the accurate translation of the source
text into the target language, editing of the text by a separate
translation team and final proofreading by a native speaker. In
order to stay true to the source content, many times this can
result in translations that are more literal. Copywriting or
trans-creation is required in projects that involve marketing or
persuasive content, where the translated text must be then
rewritten to make the message persuasive, as well as accurate and
culturally appropriate. In some cases, a target language locale may
be so different that a complete rewrite of source marketing text is
required.

Localizing of graphics: Graphics are updated by
extracting translatable text from source graphics, translating that
text in the target language, and finally placing the text back into
the new "translated" graphic.

Online QA: On Website localization projects,
it's essential to have language professionals examine a localized
website in context ensuring all linguistic and cosmetic items are
correct and the application or site works properly for the target
users. Proper platforms, browsers, and test scripts are used to
ensure the experience of the target user will be as good as if the
application was developed specifically for that market.

Working with Content Management Systems: There
are different types of multilingual web content management
solutions that support the Spanish Language and website
localization, including:

Having a CMS-based solution for multilingual websites reduces
the number of people who handle content, which significantly
reduces the chance to make a mistake. The elimination of webmaster
involvement and technical expertise required by client-side authors
or translation company linguists can significantly lower costs
through the
website translation process. For more information on
multilingual CMS, please check our blog Website Localization and
CMS.

Japanese Website Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Yahoo Japan remains a very popular
search engine. Majority owner, Softbank (Yahoo is a minority
stakeholder), is a major player both online and through their
ownership in internet infrastructure throughout the country. Your
search engine optimization effort must be focused on both Yahoo
Japan and Google in order to reach the majority of Japanese
internet users. To optimize your website's ranking on these
engines, build a comprehensive campaign that includes the following
initiatives:

Comprehensive website translation and localization

Multilingual keyword phrase research, refinement and
localization

Multilingual Search Engine Optimization and copy writing of
main site content

Comments

Tricia Soogrim - Global Client Services ManagerTricia is originally from Trinidad & Tobago, a lovely twin island located in the southern Caribbean. She now resides in another sea-side city halfway around the world in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. She has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Management Studies from the University of the West Indies. Tricia is a highly driven, results-oriented client services professional who has a passion for helping clients design, develop and deploy multilingual websites for worldwide use. She has extensive experience implementing various Web Content Management Solutions for clients and is an Ektron Certified Web Developer. One of her career highlights was working with a multidisciplinary team of project managers, designers and developers on the high profile “Summit of the Americas” website in 2009. She enjoys spending time with family and friends, travel, photography, cricket, football and exploring new technology.